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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/23187646">Like Salt in a Wound</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/RetroactiveCon/pseuds/RetroactiveCon'>RetroactiveCon</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Series:</b></td><td>The Scars Won't Be Tough to Erase [4]</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>The Flash (TV 2014)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Escape, Kidnapping, M/M, Rape</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-03-25</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-03-25</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-01 05:42:55</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Explicit</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>Rape/Non-Con</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>2</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>2,014</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/23187646</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/RetroactiveCon/pseuds/RetroactiveCon</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <em>“Harrison? Harrison, is that you?”</em>
</p><p>
  <em>Harrison descends the ladder at a measured pace. Behind him, he can hear rustling. Even after the better part of a month, Hartley hasn’t yet realized the futility of struggling. </em>
</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Hartley Rathaway/Eobard Thawne | Harrison Wells</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Series:</b></td><td>The Scars Won't Be Tough to Erase [4]</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Series URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/series/1558543</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>3</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>26</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>1. Chapter 1</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Harrison swings open the hatch to the hidden room below the accelerator and has to quash a flicker of excitement. It’s almost shameful how he’s come to associate the simple act of opening this hatch with pleasure. Admittedly, he has little other reason to descend to the hidden room, but he could. His subconscious needn’t assume things. </p><p>At the first gentle tap of shoe on ladder rung, a raspy voice begs, “Harrison? Harrison, is that you?”</p><p>Harrison descends the ladder at a measured pace. Behind him, he can hear rustling. Even after the better part of a month, Hartley hasn’t yet realized the futility of struggling. </p><p>“Harrison?” Hartley’s pitch rises and his voice takes on a panicked edge. No doubt he’s contemplating what might happen to him if someone other than Harrison has found him. Harrison lets him stew in that fear while he crosses the room. Every tap of his shoes on the concrete makes Hartley press more tightly against the wall, his face upturned toward the noise. His blindfold is damp with tears. Sweet thing—after this long, Harrison would have thought he’d grow weary of weeping. </p><p>“Hartley.” Harrison cradles Hartley’s cheek. Hartley makes a distressed noise and flinches, although he seems not to know whether he wants to move away from Harrison's touch or press into it. Harrison kisses him, deep and hard and long enough to leave him breathless. Hartley struggles to pull free. Out of spite, Harrison kisses him until he stops struggling; then he lets him fall back on the cot, where he lays gasping for breath. While Hartley is disoriented, Harrison undoes the bindings on his ankles and forces him to spread his legs. </p><p>“Harrison,” Hartley begs. At the start of his imprisonment, he fought back. Harrison had to admire his tenacity, if nothing else. By now, he’s much too weak and disheartened to fight. Harrison would hardly have expected such a proud boy to stoop to begging, but Hartley has always had a way of defying his expectations. “Please let me go. Please, I won’t say anything…”</p><p>“Oh, Hartley.” Harrison sinks down on the cot between his trembling thighs. Hartley’s heels scrabble at the mattress, trying to get enough purchase to scoot away. They both know how useless it is; there’s nowhere for Hartley to run. “I wish I could, but I can’t risk you speaking out. I am truly sorry.”</p><p>He is, too: sorry that he misjudged Hartley so badly. He’d never guessed Hartley would be paranoid enough about the accelerator to run those equations or stubborn enough to continue them by hand when Harrison wiped his electronic data. Nor would he have guessed that a boy as haughty as Hartley Rathaway would be willing to sacrifice his career to do the right thing. By rights, Harrison should have killed him, but over the years, he’s grown dangerously fond of the boy. Even now, when Hartley’s continued existence can only pose a threat to years of work, Harrison can’t bring himself to kill him. </p><p>Hartley doesn’t beg while Harrison fucks him. No doubt this is his last concession to his pride: while he’s being used, he doesn’t make a sound. Only after Harrison has finished and bound his legs again does he plead, “Why are you doing this? Why do you have to keep me quiet?” </p><p>Harrison helps him drink some water and eat a few bites of questionable STAR Labs cafeteria fare. “I would think someone as clever as you already has a hypothesis,” he says. </p><p>He’s halfway up the ladder by the time Hartley mumbles, “I do. I just thought I’d test it.”</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0002"><h2>2. Chapter 2</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>After one final scrape of fibers against roughened metal, the ropes around Hartley’s wrists slacken. He stifles a cry of relief, then a cry of pain as he tries to lower his arms from their position above his head. His muscles have locked; every attempt to move them burns like acid. By moving in slow, small increments, he manages to ease them down to his sides. There’s no way he can use his hands to remove the blindfold from his eyes. Even the thought sends agonizing pain down his arms. Instead, he thrashes his head against the cot until the blindfold dislodges and slips down his face. </p>
<p>Without his glasses, and after weeks of unceasing darkness, Hartley can see next to nothing. Shapes and shadows loom in the dimness—walls, perhaps, or columns. Far away, he thinks he sees a yellow smudge. It might be the ladder that leads out of wherever he’s being held. There are twenty-six rungs (he counted them by sound over several of Wells’ visits), and he doubts he’ll be capable of ascending a single one. </p>
<p>By moving in the same painful increments as before, he’s able to twist himself into a position where he can untie the ropes binding his ankles. Were the ropes not supple from being untied and re-tied so often (he suppresses a shudder), he would have no chance of undoing the knot. Because they’re relatively pliable and the knots relatively loose, he’s able to free himself. </p>
<p>As much as he would like to take five or ten minutes to ease his tense muscles, he hasn’t the time to spare. Wells’ visits are inconsistent and unpredictable; he could even now be on his way. Hartley needs to find his glasses and make a plan. </p>
<p>Rising from the cot is breathtakingly painful. His legs give out and send him toppling to the floor. He catches himself on his hands and knees, a little sob of frustration escaping him before he can think to muffle it. His father always called him weak. If only he could see him now, too feeble to even stand upright—proof of every accusation he hurled at Hartley when last they spoke. </p>
<p>With that thought motivating him, Hartley crawls to a dark blur that may or may not be a table. Upon reaching the dark blur, he sits back on his heels and puts out a hand to explore. His fingertips meet with cool metal. When he follows it, it leads up to a similarly cool, flat surface that seems strong enough to bear his weight. He hooks both hands onto the edge of the flat surface and uses it to lever himself to his feet. </p>
<p>It’s at this precise moment that an alarm sounds. Hartley lets go of the table in shock and crashes back to the floor. A dozen scenarios whirl through his mind, each worse than the last. The table must be on a pressure sensor for this exact eventuality; he’ll be found and recaptured or worse. </p>
<p>Something falls to the floor with a cheerful, plastic <em>clack.</em> Hartley reaches out a hesitant hand and closes his fingers around an earpiece. He draws in a shaky, relieved breath. Now that he has his glasses back, he’ll be able to evaluate his surroundings and make some kind of plan. </p>
<p>Putting on his glasses brings the room into clearer focus. The shapes he’d taken for columns are massive square supports that suggest he’s somewhere underground, presumably below something heavy—the accelerator! He throws back his head and laughs. No wonder Wells was able to visit so frequently. He didn’t have to leave STAR Labs to do so! </p>
<p>This casts the alarm in an unfortunate new light. Hartley doesn’t know how long he’s been locked down here, but it’s no doubt been long enough that the accelerator has been finished. That alarm might signal the failure his equations predicted, which Wells so summarily dismissed. </p>
<p>Hartley pulls himself to his feet a second time and staggers toward the yellow ladder. He doesn’t know where he is, but there are points of access to the central hallways around the whole loop. If he can reach one of those points of access, he can get into the main workings and see what needs to be done. He couldn’t prevent this from happening, but maybe he can stop it before Wells blows a hole in Central City. </p>
<p>He’s almost to the first of two ladders when the floor lurches under his feet. He’s thrown to the ground, narrowly missing an unpleasant impact with a wooden chair. The room continues to shake, small tremors swelling into large ones and then subsiding into barely-noticeable vibrations. Unsteady as he is, Hartley can’t walk through this. Instead, he pushes himself up on his hands and knees and crawls to the ladder. </p>
<p>He’s grateful that the first ladder he has to maneuver is short, wide, and sturdy. The metal rails feel thick and reassuring under his hands, and he’s able to get a stable enough foothold that he doesn’t fear falling. </p>
<p>He’s on the penultimate rung when something overhead makes a scraping sound like rock sliding against rock. He looks up in time to see a chunk of concrete tumbling toward him. His hold on the ladder slackens with shock, and without warning, he’s falling.</p>
<p></p><div class="center">
  <p>***</p>
</div>Hartley wakes buried in rubble. His head aches, his right eye throbs, and his ears are ringing. With an effort, he’s able to open his eyes. At first, all he can see is tortoiseshell. When he moves his head, the reason for this becomes clear: the nosepiece of his glasses got jammed into the tender skin between his eye and the bridge of his nose. He raises a hand to adjust his glasses, misses, and hooks his middle finger against the cartilage of his ear. It comes away wet with blood.<p>“Oh,” he whispers, or he thinks he whispers. The burst of breath from his lips sounds like the gust of air across a too-sensitive microphone. He claps his hands to his ears to muffle the sound and screams: the sound of his hands clapping into place is as sharp and loud as a burst of gunfire. What’s happened to him?</p>
<p>With an effort, he takes stock of his surroundings. There’s rubble collected around him, but he fell into a naturally protected place between the floor and the concrete platform that separates the two ladders. A slab of rubble protected his torso, although it didn’t shield his legs, which are covered in chunks of concrete. </p>
<p>It takes him the better part of an hour to extricate himself from the rubble, not least because every shift of concrete makes a noise that feels like knifepoints dragging across his skin. By the time he’s free, he’s struggling to bite back sobs that would no doubt mean unbearable pain. </p>
<p>Afterward, he can’t recall how he got out of his subterranean prison. The next thing he’s fully conscious of is wandering through STAR Labs, trying to remember the way to the door. A harried paramedic stops him. “Where are your clothes, kid?” </p>
<p>Hartley glances down at himself, remembering for the first time that he’s wearing nothing but a tattered shirt and a pair of briefs. He raises a hand to his head, trying to indicate without words that he doesn’t know. He can’t bear to talk lest it cause him more pain. </p>
<p>“Okay.” The medic’s low, gruff voice is bearable, albeit a little loud. Hartley allows him to steer him over to a hastily-assembled triage area. Dimly, he recognizes it as his lab. “C’mon in here, we’ll look you over.” </p>
<p>Hartley tolerates being examined and listens when the medic pronounces that he’s got a concussion and damage to his inner ears. As soon as he mentions the hospital, Hartley flees. He can’t go to the hospital; he has to take care of himself somehow. </p>
<p>Only once he’s halfway to his apartment does he realize that he’s missed two months’ worth of rent. He doubts he has an apartment to go back to. It’s all right, he tells himself; he’s survived on the street before, and he can do so again. Tears prickle the backs of his eyes and he bites his lip sharply to drive them away. He won’t allow himself to cry. He’ll find some pants and somewhere to sleep, and then he’ll make a plan—if the unceasing screaming in his ears doesn’t drive him mad.</p>
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